Half a Century of Glorious Olympic Hair

If you've watched any of the Rio games this past week, then you might have noticed that a common thread has emerged among the male athletes: hair. These guys aren't just shearing their locks and going for gold, they're putting some serious effort into their do's. And in many cases, that means some version of the undercut.

Thank (or blame) David Beckham for this, but it seems like every male athlete on earth since 2014 has gone in for the trendy hairstyle. But it wasn't always this way. Just as records are continually broken at the Summer Games, so too do hairstyles change. From feathered bangs to emo mop-tops, here's a look back at the last half-century of Olympic hair.

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MEXICO, 1968: Taking place during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, the '68 Games perfectly demonstrated the transition from clean-cut Don Draper to something a lot less square.

MUNICH, 1972: Hair went pretty wild for the '72 Munich Games. So much so that it took up extra real estate on the upper lip.

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Steve Prefontaine (United States) - Track & Field

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Mark Spitz (United States) - Swimming

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Frank Shorter (United States) - Track & Field

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MONTREAL, 1976: Call it the year of the Jenner bowl cut, when athletes decided they needed helmets of hair to give them that extra competitive edge.

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Brendan Foster (Great Britain) - Track & Field

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Victor Sanyeyev (USSR) - Track & Field

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Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner (United States) - Decathlon

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Eltjo Schutter (Netherlands) - Decathlon

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LOS ANGELES, 1984: Mary Lou Retton was the star of these Olympics. Maybe that's why every athlete, men and women included, appeared to have some version of her round, fluffy 'do.

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Mary Lou Retton (United States) - Gymnastics

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Dietmar Mogenburg (Germany) - Track & Field

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Sebastien Seb Coe (Great Britain) - Track & Field

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Roger Kingdom (United States) - Track & Field

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SEOUL, 1988: Remember Sun-In? Clearly the athletes of the '88 Seoul Olympics do. Call it The Era of the Frosted Wave, because half the athletes had blond streaks and a waterfall of bangs. Must have been some lingering A Flock of Seagulls influence.

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Karch Kiraly (United States) - Volleyball

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Steve Redgrave (Great Britain) - Rowing

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Arnd Schmitt (Germany) - Fencing

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BARCELONA, 1992: Four years later in Barcelona, the frosted bangs of the '80s became the short, feathered bangs of the early '90s. It must have cost a fortune to power all of those blow dryers.

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Stephon Caron (France) - Swimming

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Vitali Chrcherbo (Russia) - Gymnastics

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Franck David (France) - Windsurfing

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ATLANTA, 1996: When the Olympics came around to Atlanta, Georgia, in '96, the athletes were all business. No more distractions, like worrying about hair. Buzz cuts, crewcuts—this was the age some seriously short hair.

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Michael Johnson (United States) - Track & Field

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Dan O'Brien (United States) - Decathlon

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Alexi Nemov (Russia) - Gymnastics

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SYDNEY, 2000: Though it was the new millennium, the '90s were having a hard time letting go. Most notably in the form of the center part.

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Pieter Van den Hoogenband (Netherlands) - Swimming

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Llewellyn Herbert (South Africa) - Track & Field

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Paul Hamm (United States) - Gymnastics

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ATHENS, 2004: This was the emo era of Death Cab for Cutie and Dashboard Confessional, when athletes wore mop-headed hairstyles in order to channel their inner Seth Cohen.

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